Amantine's Song

Chapter 5

November 1991

CHAPTER 1

All I really cared about was building my world. And my world had to have very solid foundations. I had a clear perception of my life and my desires, as if I already knew my destiny, the reason why I was born.

In twenty-seven years of life I had never been the victim of hesitations or indecisions. My way was painted in front of me, well defined, like in those paintings where you can see the background and beyond, beyond, even beyond. I had planned my existence as a straight, perfect, incorruptible line. Until I reached old age, I would dare to say. My story. I wouldn’t allow anyone to bribe or break it. No one, ever. For any reason. For no curious synchronicity of destiny.

Literature was my life. I’ve never looked for a real reason. I only knew it was like that. I had chosen it. Whether the choice was mutual or not did not concern me, even if probably it should have. Study, specialization in English, PhD. Mine was a sort of vocation. My mentor was Professor Hermann Frey. I was striving to become his assistant more than anything else in the world, learning from him everything he knew and then one day taking his place. In a purely platonic sense, he was the man of my life.

I lived in a luxury apartment in the Notting Hill area. Not mine. I had settled in the home of family friends, Doris and Rupert Parker, with the agreement of occasionally taking care of their little daughter, little Jinny. The truth was another. I endured in situations that were not entirely satisfying to avoid more compromising ones, in order not to be forced to give up my freedom. I wasn’t ready yet and inside I knew that maybe I would never be.

I wanted to reach my goals alone and my obstinacy wouldn’t allow compromises. I intended to build my world without depending on my parents’ one. I was myself, Amantine Delamar, completely self-governed and independent from the rest of the world. All I would achieve would be mine only, from the beginning and forever.

What I enthusiastically accepted from my parents, also because I wouldn’t have had the chance to reject it, was a good dose of cosmopolitanism that would favour me wherever I decided to live. I was a concentrate of cultures. My father was a French-English diplomat with Spanish ancestry, my mother an Italian-Swiss astrophysicist. Perhaps they should have thought about it before getting married and bringing children into the world. My brother Alain and I belonged to many places and none, with all the advantages and disadvantages of people who had no roots. No bonding, no attachment, no pain. Just ourselves.